Mobile advertising is gaining traction across Asia Pacific, with almost half (45%) of all digital advertising campaigns across the region measured by Nielsen including a mobile component, according to Nielsen’s recently released Digital Ad Ratings Benchmarks Report, which provides a baseline for understanding digital advertising reach performance to help evaluate campaign success. The rapid growth in mobile measurement is fueled by the mobile-first nature of many markets in the region, led by China where every campaign measured included a mobile component, while around 70% of all campaigns measured in Thailand, Malaysia, and India included a mobile component on the media plan.

Marketers are more willing to invest in a platform if there is independent, third-party measurement to provide transparent performance metrics and inform best practices that reduce waste and maximize return on ad spend. This message is especially resonant for mobile. Ever since Nielsen Digital Ad Ratings introduced mobile measurement in its service over the course of 2015, advertisers, agencies, publishers, and platforms have been eager to better understand how much of their intended audience their mobile campaigns are actually reaching.

Marketers running digital campaigns have long looked to understand the relationship between advertising audiences on desktop and mobile devices, especially as audiences become more granular. In general, it’s easier to reach a broad audience than a more narrowly defined one. This is true for age groups as well as gender - mixed male and female audiences spanning more than 30 years in age achieved an average desktop on-target rate of 79%, meaning the campaign accurately delivered 79% of its desktop impressions to this audience composition. This was the highest on-target rate out of all audience compositions measured in Asia Pacific, and in line with the global average of 81%. Conversely, campaigns focusing on just one gender, for example males-only 18+ or females only 25+, on-target rates on desktops drop to 47%.

Reaching intended audiences via mobile campaigns, on the other hand, is less challenging and in some instances outperforms desktop campaigns. Mobile performance for campaigns that focus on male-only or female-only audiences that span more than 30 years in age achieve an on-target rate of 53%, seven percentage points higher than desktop average on-target rate for this audience type. The majority of campaigns with a mobile component were focused on medium audiences, defined as audiences spanning 16-30 years in age. Mixed male and female audiences spanning 16-30 years made up one-third of all campaigns with a mobile component, and achieved an average on-target rate of 62% versus desktop’s 58%. Male-only or female-only audiences spanning 16-30 years in age made up one-fifth of all campaigns with a mobile component, and achieved an average on-target rate of 39% versus desktop’s 36%. The tendency toward more narrowly defined audiences on mobile reinforces the narrative of mobile devices as a highly personal platform with the potential for more precise connections.

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